No longer to be found for "certain" keywords.
-
I'd like to see if anyone could potentially shade a light on this rather strange scenario:
Basically yesterday I noticed that we are no longer to be found for 'certain' keywords that we had page 2-3 ranking. Yet, for other keywords we still appear on page 2-3. These keywords are very competitive and our rankings has constantly improved in the course of 5-6 months.
Now my question is that what could or may have contributed to the fact that for only some keywords we are no longer to be found? Another question is, can Google remove you from their SERPs for certain keywords 'only'? Thank you,
Maximilian. -
Thank you once again. I will get in touch with you. Please PM your contact details. We are located in downtown Manhattan.
-
Strategies for dealing with external duplicate content are overviewed here.
A much bigger concern is duplicating your OWN content. I know it sounds kind of silly, but it is a very real issue, especially since Google's most recent update (Panda). Is there more than one URL for any page on your website? Does http://website.com direct to http://www.website.com? Do you have canonicalization problems related to pagination or something similar?
These issues are discussed in-depth here.
If you think that your issues may be related to on-site or site architecture factors, the best thing you can do is hire a qualified SEO consultant that can assess these issues and make actionable recommendations for correcting them.
-
Anthony, our website has been online since 2002 and we have been getting organic quality backlinks for a very long time. Directory submission was just added literally 4 weeks in an effort to 'add more value'. It was never intended to use it as the only source, but just was an effort to increase the rankings. Who knew it would or could potentially backfire.
On another note, you mentioned that duplicate content may cause this issue. Our content is very reach and well-written and there are a number of sites who have copied/pasted our content. Despite all of our efforts and having had contacted their hosting companies to shut down their website, no changes have been made. Now my question is, do we get affected if "others" have copied our content on their website? Does Google have any algorithmic to define which site has copied which sites data?
Thank you once again for your insightful information.
-
Maximilian -
If Google has devalued some of your links, there's no way to "recover" these links. That's the bad news.
The good news is that this happens to websites every day, and it's not by any means a permanent penalization or anything of that sort. All it means is that the time and effort spent to build these links was squandered.
What can you do to speed up your recovery? Switch the way you think about link building. Directory submissions are useful, but they shouldn't by any means comprise the majority of your link building strategy.
I would suggest reading this article cover to cover. It will teach you the proper mindset you should have when approaching linkbuilding, and it will give you dozens and dozens of ideas to get started with building high quality links from relevant, authoritative domains.
Replace directory submissions with strategies like writing guest blog posts, creating amazing content (linkbait) and subsequently promoting it on social media and social bookmarking websites, and/or creating a widget that would be an invaluable addition to any website in your industry. All of these are covered under the "Content-Based Link Building Strategies" section of the SEOmoz Professional Guide to Linkbuilding that is linked to above.
-
"You have been building low quality links and they have been devalued by Google, causing you to lose hundreds (thousands?) of keyword-rich backlinks."
Anthony, thank you for your response. The above statement could potentially be the source of issue, considering one of our staff members been doing directory submissions (30 per day).
Now you mentioned that Google may have devalued the high-quality banklinks that have had due to gaining low quality backlinks. In your experience, what can be done to resolve this issue? Is this devaluation something permanent or a temporary? What can be done to speed up the recovery?
Thank you in advance.
-
There are tons of reasons why your website might see a drop in rankings for certain keywords. Here are a few:
-
Increased competition in your niche pushed your website down as new websites started to rank above you.
-
You have been building low quality links and they have been devalued by Google, causing you to lose hundreds (thousands?) of keyword-rich backlinks.
-
Your website has been affected by a Google algorithm update. For one reason or another (duplicate content? shallow or nonexistent content on some pages? too many ads / too big of a "footprint"?), your website is being seen as less trustworthy, and this has affected rankings sitewide. (Note, some rankings would be maintained, particularly for keywords with low competition.)
-
You were logged into your Google account when you saw these rankings, and your website was appearing higher than it typically does because of your personalized search data. When you logged out and checked your rankings, you noticed a "drop" in ranking that was not actually real. (Okay, this one is unlikely, but we've all seen it before.)
-
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Is Chamber of Commerce membership a "paid" link, breaking Google's rules?
Hi guys, This drives me nuts. I hear all the time that any time value is exchanged for a link that it technically violates Google's guidelines. What about real organizations, chambers of commerce, trade groups, etc. that you are a part of that have online directories with DO-follow links. On one hand people will say these are great links with real value outside of search and great for local SEO..and on the other hand some hardliners are saying that these technically should be no-follow. Thoughts???
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RickyShockley0 -
Community Discussion - What's the ROI of "pruning" content from your ecommerce site?
Happy Friday, everyone! 🙂 This week's Community Discussion comes from Monday's blog post by Everett Sizemore. Everett suggests that pruning underperforming product pages and other content from your ecommerce site can provide the greatest ROI a larger site can get in 2016. Do you agree or disagree? While the "pruning" tactic here is suggested for ecommerce and for larger sites, do you think you could implement a similar protocol on your own site with positive results? What would you change? What would you test?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MattRoney2 -
SEO agency makes "hard to believe" claims
Hi I operate in a highly competitive niche of "sell house fast" in UK. Sites that are in top 1-3 tend to have thousands of links. Some of these are spammy type links. These sites have Domain Authority too. My site has good content http://propertysaviour.co.uk and is listed with around 12 well known directories. I have been building back-links manually over the last 3-4 months. The SEO agency we are looking to work with are claiming they can get my website to first page with above keyword. How would you go about this strategy? What questions would you ask SEO agency? What elements can do I myself? By the way, I am good at producing content!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | propertysaviour0 -
Redirect old "not found" url (at http) to new corresponding page (now at https)
My least favorite part of SEO 😉 I'm trying to redirect an old url that no longer exists to our new website that is built with https. The old url: http://www.thinworks.com/palm-beach-gardens-team/ New url: https://www.thinworks.com/palm-beach-gardens/ This isn't working with my standard process of the quick redirection plugin in WP or through htaccess because the old site url is at http and not https. Any help would be much appreciated! How do I accomplish this, where do I do it and what's the code I'd use? Thank you Moz community! Ricky
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SUCCESSagency0 -
Two Webstites Targeting the Same Keywords
If I aquire a website in the same industry targeting the same keywords. Should I merge them into one? I understand it's a bad idea to have multiple websites promoting the same thing, but i'd like to capture the customer base of a competing website. What's everyone's thoughts? A- Merge new to main website with 301's? will google like that? B- Keep them separate? Will google like that? C- Don't bother. D- Toss the computer and get into Horticulture
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | residualboulders0 -
Canonical URL's - Do they need to be on the "pointed at" page?
My understanding is that they are only required on the "pointing pages" however I've recently heard otherwise.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DPSSeomonkey0 -
"Iffy" Question
Hi Guys and Girls, I have been studying SEO for a few years now. I have learned quite a bit along the way. One thing that I have had BEAT in my head is "Create Quality Content". When I used to ask "What Should I do to get more visits?" I was told, "Create QUALITY CONTENT". That was great advice, and I have done that. I have created over 600 pages since then. I went from 200 visits per month to now just over 5,000. Even more importantly, I have increased my lead conversions. I say all of this because, about two years ago I told a competitor basically how you rise up in the search engines. He turned around and bought a domain that was 3 years older than mine and had a main keyword in the domain. He then just started building links with a bunch of blog comments and forum posts (The blog comments have like 2,000 comments on them). In other words, he did what I would NOT do yet he is #5 for this keyword and I am #9. (Although, I turned around and built another site and now I am at #13 for that and it has been up for a year now. I say all this, not to bore you but to tell ask you, DOES IT WORK IF YOU DO BLOG COMMENTING, FORUM POSTING, LINK WHEELS, ETC. Do you obtain higher rankings? Should I be doing a bit of video marketing? I know a lot of people will say, "Why would you spend your time on things that may slightly impact your rankings, but obviously it did something for this guy. Any help you can give would be greatly appreciated.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | blake-766241 -
Question about "launching to G" a new site with 500000 pages
Hey experts, how you doing? Hope everything is ok! I'm about to launch a new website, the code is almost done. Totally fresh new domain. The site will have like 500000 pages, fully internal optimized of course. I got my taticts to make G "travel" over my site to get things indexed. The problem is: to release it in "giant mode" or release it "thin" and increase the pages over the time? What do you recomend? Release the big G at once and let them find the 500k pages (do they think this can be a SPAM or something like that)? Or release like 1k/2k per day? Anybody know any good aproach to improve my chances of success here? Any word will be apreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | azaiats20